universities

Universities with Church of England foundations have been told to emphasise their Christian credentials to make it easier to dismiss staff who don’t share those values, reports The Times Higher Education Supplement.

Students from across the UK will gather together this coming weekend at the Student Christian Movement's annual conference to explore the theme of Reading the Bible - against a backdrop where there is increasing public concern aout the way religious texts are often abused by extreme and fundamentalist movements.

The Student Christian Movement, a long-established organisation on university and college campuses across the UK, has joined calls for a positive, mediatory approach to disagreements between evangelical Christian Unions and Students Unions.

More questions are being raised about the agendas of Evangelical lobby and campaign groups in universities after it emerged that Exeter University's Evangelical Christian Union initiated legal action against its own students' union and university - although it was aware that the sanctions they were protesting against were no longer in force.

A report published by the think tank Ekklesia suggests that the high-profile conflict between a number of Christian Unions and Students' Unions need not end in legal action ‚Ä' which would be damaging to all concerned.